


Collateral Damage

by dracoqueen22



Series: Coping Mechanisms [3]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Character Study, Dom/sub Undertones, M/M, d/s gone wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 04:20:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/948554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracoqueen22/pseuds/dracoqueen22
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A line is crossed. A mistake is made. And once lost, trust may be impossible to regain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage

**Author's Note:**

> This is the sequel to Undisclosed Desires that had been many long months in the making. I'd highly suggest reading it or this might not make much sense. It is also actually part three in the series as part two hasn't been written yet, but can be read without it.

“It's not healthy.”  
  
Jazz rolled his optics, turning his helm away. “And who are you to decide what's healthy?”  
  
A field flooded the tiny private room, battering at Jazz's weakened defenses. “Only the medic who spent the last six hours putting your sorry chassis back together,” Ratchet snarled, and there was real anger in his vocals. Real disappointment.  
  
Twisting back toward the medic, Jazz huffed a ventilation. “And I appreciate that,” he said, “but the rest is none of your business.”  
  
“It becomes my business when I have to fix the aftermath,” Ratchet retorted, with a pointed look at Jazz's current state.  
  
To be fair, he'd been repaired, but he had more than a few static bandages covering his plating while self-repair fixed him on a molecular level. His paint was scratched and mismatched, his visor gone, and he was lying in a medberth in the Ark. A place Jazz rarely deigned to visit.  
  
That it was inspired, not by a Deception attack, but as a result of a miscalculation in the berth was the reason for Ratchet's slowly building fury.  
  
Jazz ground his denta. “What two mechs do in the privacy of their quarters--”  
  
“Stuff it, Jazz,” Rachet snapped. “This goes beyond privacy. How long?”  
  
Jazz was not going to dignify that with an answer. He maintained it was none of Ratchet's business. Ratchet fixing him did not give the medic the right to start prying into his personal affairs.  
  
Ratchet shifted his weight in his chair, old springs creaking beneath him. “If you prefer, I can send Ironhide to take Bluestreak to the brig.”  
  
“He hasn't done anything!” Jazz protested, helm jerking up.  
  
“Aside from severely injuring an officer?” Ratchet arched an orbital ridge, gesturing to Jazz's current state again. “Because unless you talk to me, that's all I can conclude.”  
  
Jazz glared, more effective without the visor shielding his optics. “You really are sparkless.”  
  
“Answer my question.”  
  
An exasperated hiss blew out of his vents. Jazz shoved back against the berth, feeling cornered and by Primus, did he hate to feel cornered.  
  
“You can't tell me we're the only ones who indulge in a little kink,” he argued.  
  
Ratchet scoffed, flicking one hand through the air, his field flat and unamused. “And if this were just a little play gone wrong, then I'd be teasing you and we'd be laughing about it. But it's not.”  
  
“You don't--”  
  
“Don't tell me what 'I don't', Jazz. I know the difference.” Ratchet's optics narrowed. “This is no game. How long?”  
  
There was no one on this planet, in this solar system, Pit in this whole fragging universe who was more stubborn than Ratchet.  
  
Jazz jerked his gaze away. “Does it matter?” he gritted out.  
  
Ratchet sighed, and rubbed his palm down his face, pinching his olfactory sensor. “With the exception of Prowl, I am the only one on the Ark who knows about Bluestreak, Jazz. So yes, it matters.”  
  
Expectant silence filled the room. Ratchet stared, as patient as he was stubborn, at least when it came to something like this. Jazz knew, without asking, that Ratchet would take this to the next level if he had to. He would involve Prime and yes, Ratchet would have Bluestreak taken to the brig. It was not an idle threat.  
  
He cycled a ventilation, spark folding in on itself. “Too long,” Jazz admitted, barely loud enough for Ratchet's audials to detect. “And also, not long enough.”  
  
Time, he reasoned, was not an effective measure by any means. Or definition.  
  
Ratchet's silence was deafening.  
  
“Look,” Jazz added with an exasperated hiss and twist of his frame. “It's complicated. It has to be. I'm a member of command. He's not. Doesn't matter what we were before.”  
  
“That explains the secrecy,” Ratchet said quietly. “But not everything else.”  
  
Jazz ground his denta. “I need it.”  
  
“Need what?”  
  
He rolled his shoulders, though the motion was far from nonchalant. It was meant, more, to express that he didn't really have an answer. “The pain,” he said. “The release. The trust. Take your pick.”  
  
Ratchet sat forward, hands clasped in front of him. “And what about Bluestreak? What does he need?”  
  
Jazz nibbled on his bottom lip. “You'll have to ask him that.”  
  
“Believe me, I will. If only to make sure this never happens again.”  
  
There was... something. In Ratchet's tone. Something that Jazz didn't like, that sent warning bells through his processor.  
  
“It won't,” Jazz said, gaze swinging back toward the medic, one of his oldest friends, a mech he could trust with his very spark.  
  
Ratchet, however, rose to his pedes, his expression closed off and his field equally so. “I'm not talking about being more careful, Jazz.”  
  
Possibilities sprang up in Jazz's processor, weighed, considered, and dismissed until his tactical software landed on the right one. He went rigid on the berth, spark pulsing a sharp burst of emotion before he could lock it down.  
  
“Ratchet, what did you do?” Jazz demanded, and it was far from his usual friendly tone. It was the tone of the Autobot's third in command.  
  
“What needs to be done.” Ratchet lifted his helm, his field flat and unreadable. “Get some recharge,” he said, and headed toward the door, keying it open. “Your self-repair still needs time to work and you're several days from getting off that berth.”  
  
Jazz's optics cycled wider. “Ratchet?”  
  
The door swished shut behind the medic.  
  
“Ratchet!”  
  
He knew that Ratchet could hear him. Ratchet could fragging hear a clogged filter or dripping, torn line from two rooms over. He could slag well hear Jazz shouting for him.  
  
Frustration huffed from his vents. Jazz accessed his comm, attempting to contact Ratchet, and got nothing. Fragging sadist had disabled his comms, probably in some vain effort to keep Jazz in the berth. Well, good luck with that.  
  
He wasn't connected to any lines. There was nothing to stop him from getting up and walking out of here. Jazz rolled to his left and hissed as pain radiated up his side, liquid fire coursing down his back where temp plating covered what had been particularly nasty series of energy whipmarks.  
  
“Frag it!” he snarled, and shifted to his back once again, easing the strain on his damaged strut cables and dulling the pain to a tolerable throb.  
  
The door slid open and Jazz looked up, ready to give Ratchet a verbal lashing the likes of wish he'd never heard. Except that it wasn't Ratchet.  
  
Jazz's sneer returned with a vengeance. “Is it your turn to interrogate me now?”  
  
Prowl didn't so much as twitch at the venomous tone. “You can call it that if you like,” he said with his usual mild expression that annoyed the Pit out of Jazz even on a good day. And he liked Prowl.  
  
“Slag it, Prowl, don't use that tone on me,” Jazz snarled, and his hands bunched into fists. “I'm not one of the twins!”  
  
Prowl inclined his helm. “Very well,” he said, and invited himself into the chair Ratchet had abandoned, leveling a stare at Jazz. “Then tell me why I should deny Ratchet's recommendation to transfer Bluestreak back to Cybertron.”  
  
The question hit Jazz like a punch to the chestplate. “He did _what_?”  
  
“As far as anyone else is concerned, this was a training accident. Only Ratchet and I know any different.” Prowl's doorwings settled against his back, though Jazz could hardly call them relaxed. “The decision, Jazz, is mine alone though you are certainly welcome to take the matter up with Prime if you feel I am being unfair.”  
  
Words, most of them impolite, danced on the tip of Jazz's glossa. He spoke none of them. He didn't dare and keep his friendship with Prowl intact.  
  
“Jazz,” Prowl said, and this time, he abandoned his near-condescending tone. “Talk to me.”  
  
He slowly relaxed his hands, dialing back the urge to leap off this berth and hunt down a backstabbing medic. “What do you want to know?”  
  
“Tell me it's not pain for the sake of pain. Tell me that you are healing, not picking at a rusted wound.” Prowl paused, his expression briefly flicking out of neutral and into something colored at the edges with concern. “Tell me it is mutually beneficial and not an unhealthy farce.”  
  
Jazz grimaced, anger returning in a storm of indignation, as it often did when he was backed into a corner. “Funny,” he spat, “because I don't see ya interrogating Ratchet when he gets overcharged and frags around with whoever'll take him. Or when Ironhide stomps out of comm range for days.” Tension roared through his frame all over again. “I don't see you forcing Red Alert to explain why he creeps into Smokescreen's room after a glitch. Or demanding that Sunstreaker get over his need to pummel on the minibot horde.”  
  
Prowl had nothing to say. His silence was too telling.  
  
Jazz's fist thumped the berth. “Those're all coping mechanisms,” he growled. “We all got 'em. Even you. So why is mine suddenly everyone's business?”  
  
Prowl cycled a slow and careful ventilation. “Jazz, you were in spark arrest. Bluestreak had to make an emergency call to medbay and Ratchet was pulled from recharge to make sure you didn't offline.”  
  
Shame threatened to discredit his indignation. Jazz's visor found the wall most interesting. “Blue knows my limits.”  
  
He felt, more than saw, the long look Prowl gave him. “Limits that you push. I know you, Jazz. You would have never used the safety.”  
  
Jazz's mouth opened to argue, but the words wouldn't come. He knew they would be lies, just as much as Prowl would see the untruth. His mouth clamped closed once more, and look at that, there was was a dent in the wall. Why hadn't Ratchet fixed it yet?  
  
He heard Prowl shift, the quiet hiss of hydrualics. “I don't think you truly understand Bluestreak's prior function,” Prowl said, chair screeching as he slid it closer to Jazz's berth. “It is no more easier for him to break you, than it is for you to be broken.”  
  
A gentle touch brushed Jazz's arm, the undamaged one, asking politely for his undivided attention.  
  
“If he had killed you, how do you think Bluestreak would have felt?” Prowl asked, and the question hit Jazz like a slap to the face.  
  
Prowl was good at that, peeling back the layers to the barest circuit of the issue. He knew just the right things to ask, the best implications to activate a mech's guilty conscience. Jazz tried not to flinch and he knew he failed when the gentle touch withdrew and Prowl's field all but vanished from the room.  
  
“That, Jazz, is why it is our business.”  
  
He had no words, no answers for Prowl. Logic dictated that an apology must be borne, but Jazz balked at actually issuing one. He still maintained that what he did in the privacy of his quarters was his own business. And he didn't appreciate the threat made against Bluestreak. Not when Bluestreak was only doing what Jazz had asked of him.  
  
He found the wall, examining every nook and cranny as he had done when Ratchet was in here. “I need to recharge. And run a defrag.”  
  
It was not cowardice.  
  
Except where it probably was.  
  
The hissing sound from Prowl's vents was more than likely exasperation. “Yes, you do,” Prowl said, reverting to that mild tone Jazz had come to loathe. He rose to his pedes with a squeak of pistons in need of oiling. “Rest well, Jazz.”  
  
His external sensors tracked Prowl's path to the door. Jazz was more than content to let him leave on that note, but Ratchet's words lingered on his processor.  
  
“Wait.” Jazz swung his gaze back to Prowl, staring at the arched doorwings. “What about Bluestreak?”  
  
Prowl's helm dipped but he did not turn around. “I will my delay my decision until you have recovered. You have earned that much.”  
  
Somehow, it felt more like chastisement than a favor. Gratitude fought against resentment, and Jazz chomped on both, grudgingly spitting out a 'thank you'.  
  
Prowl left him alone.  
  
Jazz made an aborted attempt to curl on his side, but the tenderness was too off-putting. He resigned himself to recharging on his back, which he hated because his vents sputtered in something like a human snore.  
  
He glared at the ceiling, frame heated and uncomfortable from self-repair, parts of him aching. Whether it was because the sensory dampeners had wore off, or Ratchet hadn't given him any out of some Ratchet-idea of punishment, he didn't know. But he ached. And itched. And seethed.  
  
Recharge was a long time coming.  
  


o0o0o

  
  
He emerged from recharge to find that he was no longer alone. Groggy and still aching, Jazz cycled his optics several times, hating that his visor was gone. He dimly remembered the sound of it shattering, and he had replacements in his quarters, but no one had thought to retrieve one for him.  
  
Ratchet's idea, he assumed sourly. Medic always did have a weird way of expressing his displeasure.  
  
So he couldn't see his visitor that well, at least not yet, but there was no mistaking the curve of that helm or the frequency of that energy field. Jazz would know his lover, his partner, anywhere. And now was was no exception.  
  
Bluestreak was sitting in the chair beside the berth, previously occupied by Ratchet and Prowl. His optics were dimmed to a flat blue, a far cry from their usual gleam, and his doorwings drooped so low they were barely visible behind his shoulders.  
  
Any other mech might mistake that look for sadness, but Jazz knew better. Bluestreak was furious, and said anger was barely contained within his field.  
  
“Ratchet tells me your spark guttered on him. Twice,” Bluestreak began with no preamble. “He had to replace one of your hands, your chestplate, and reconfigure your entire haptic net. Apparently, someone had altered your sensors to maximize their perceived input.”  
  
Disapproval and anger lashed at Jazz like a physical blow. Bluestreak's lips pinched together in a slim line.  
  
His vision clarified, and the stark lines of Bluestreak's anger became even more apparent. He held himself rigid, armor drawn tight like a mech expecting attack.  
  
Guilt, like nothing Ratchet or Prowl could manage to inflict, choked Jazz's spark. “Blue--”  
  
“I have given you pain,” his partner continued, optics cutting to Jazz and cutting him off before he could stutter anything resembling an apology. “I have forced your confession, your guilt. I have broken you inside and out and I have done it because you needed it and I thought I was helping. I thought I was being the one bot you could rely on.”  
  
Bluestreak's vocals quieted, but they did not soften, matching the visible tremor that flickered over his plating in a wave. “I thought that it was nice to do what I did for a mech I loved, to help, rather than become another nightmare.”  
  
Jazz worked his intake, choking on shame in the face of Bluestreak's hurt where Ratchet's ire and Prowl's disappointment had only left him defiant.  
  
Bluestreak's engine hitched, losing pitch. “Apparently, I was wrong. If you want to die, Jazz, you'll have to find someone else to kill you.”  
  
Jazz's optics cycled wide, ventilations stuttering. “Blue, that's not--”  
  
The chair clattered as Bluestreak shot to his pedes, helm shaking in one sharp jerk. “I hope you heal quickly,” he said, the words rote, almost offhand. “Rest well, Jazz.”  
  
“Bluestreak, just let me--”  
  
The door opened and shut behind Bluestreak, who didn't so much as pause.  
  
“--explain,” Jazz finished and his hands drew into fists in his lap.  
  
His lips pressed to a thin line, venting in and out. He couldn't get up from the berth and it was pointless to try his comms. Ratchet hadn't turned them back on so he couldn't try to contact Bluestreak in that manner.  
  
This was one big, fragging mess.  
  
The door opened.  
  
Jazz's helm snapped up, thinking that Bluestreak had come back, maybe to listen, maybe to give him a chance to explain his intentions. Tell him what was really going on in Jazz's helm at the time.  
  
But, no. It was Ratchet, bearing a cube of bland, medical-grade energon and a smirk that was distinctly out of place given the situation.  
  
He raised his orbital ridges at Jazz. “Well, color me surprised,” he said with a snort, crossing the floor and holding the dim energon to Jazz. “I thought I was going to have to bolt you down to keep you here.”  
  
“Not in the mood, Ratch,” Jazz retorted, snatching the cube from the medic's hand. He made a face at the thick blend, sure to be blended with various metallics needed for self-repair. Judging by the smell, it tasted no better than it looked.  
  
“Really? Because I'm not either.” Ratchet huffed a ventilation and the distinct prickle of a scan washed over Jazz from helm to pede. “Once again, I am a miracle-worker. You'll live to do something stupid on another day.”  
  
“Lucky me.” Jazz's tanks churned, and whether it was the vile energon or the inner turmoil that was to blame, he didn't know.  
  
Ratchet circled around the berth, poking at one of the machines hooked into Jazz's systems. “I am not getting a sense of sufficient enthusiasm here.”  
  
“And here I thought I was losin' my touch.”  
  
“Primus, you are in a mood.” Ratchet's fingers rapped an annoying off-beat on a small monitor before drawing back. “Good thing you have a couple more days of berth rest to get it out of your system.”  
  
Jazz's helm swung toward Ratchet, outrage vibrating in his field. “But--”  
  
“Don't make me strap you down,” Ratchet said, and that tone was one meant to be obeyed. Even Prime listened when Ratchet put his pede down. It was not an idle threat.  
  
Jazz sighed a ventilation and forced another gulp of the gritty mixture down his intake. “Shutting up now.” Words weren't helping anyway.  
  
“Good.” Ratchet gave him another baleful look. “Drink your energon. Recharge some more. And don't even think about getting up from that berth.”  
  
With those cheerful instructions, the medic took his leave, abandoning Jazz to boredom and loneliness. Cutting off his comms was tantamount to torture, in his opinion, and there was nothing to do in here. Jazz was a high-performance frame-type. He needed stimulation!  
  
No. What he needed was to go after Bluestreak and talk to him, try to explain himself. Though he had no idea what he was going to say. He hadn't been seeking suicide. He just needed... something. Jazz wasn't sure what.  
  
Maybe that was the problem.  
  
Jazz chugged the rest of the energon and tossed his helm back against the berth, a maelstrom of indecision churning in his spark. The ache of his injuries was nothing compared to the disconnect in his processor. Prowl was furious, Ratchet even more so, and Bluestreak's betrayed field cut him to the quick. He didn't dare think about Prime's opinion, though by all accounts, Optimus probably had no clue what was going on.  
  
Jazz didn't think he could bear one of Optimus' looks of disappointment right now. Then again, there were a lot of things he wasn't sure he could bear, and Bluestreak leaving was one of them.  
  


o0o0o

  
  
Normally, a mech in recovery in the medbay was subject to a fair number of visitors, friends and lovers and family alike, at least for those lucky few who had family still amongst the living. Jazz was no stranger to residence under Ratchet's care, but his time spent berth-bound was usually augmented by a steady stream of visitors to keep him occupied and to help pass the time.  
  
But apparently, there was a no-fly zone around Jazz's current occupation. No one stopped by to say hello, or catch him up on gossip, or ask how he was doing. Whether it was because Ratchet was playing the immovable object or no one knew he was still under the Hatchet's tender mercy, Jazz didn't know.  
  
Ratchet came, brought him energon, and they traded snarky conversation that bordered on insubordinate from both ends. Ratchet flatly refused to discuss Bluestreak or whatever it was he had done to 'rectify the situation,' going so far as to ignore all of Jazz's questions, requests, demands, and outright orders.  
  
Bluestreak didn't return.  
  
It was well into the third shift on the second day when Prowl showed his faceplate again, one arm laden with a stack of datapads. Jazz stirred from a light recharge, reluctant to pin eagerness on what was sure to be another guilt-trip.  
  
“I thought you might be bored,” Prowl said, and once again, he was employing the neutral tones that Jazz so loathed.  
  
Jazz sank into the berth. “Thanks.”  
  
Prowl inclined his helm, handing the datapads over as he lowered himself to the chair beside the berth. “You are berth-bound but that doesn’t mean you can't complete your paperwork.”  
  
“I see this is your preferred method of torture,” Jazz said dryly, only glancing at the datapads before setting them aside. Paperwork? He'd rather recharge. “Have you seen Bluestreak?”  
  
Prowl's doorwings flattened. “Yes.” His tone was the flattest Jazz had ever heard him employ, dangerously close to an electronic monotone.  
  
Slag. Prowl was still beyond fragged off.  
  
Jazz rubbed his hand down his faceplate. “I need to talk to him but the slagging Hatchet cut off my comms. And it's obvious he's not going to come here on his own, so I was thinkin'--”  
  
“No.” Prowl sat forward on the edge of the chair, as though someone had exchanged his backstrut for a pole. “I will not. If Bluestreak wishes to speak with you, he is well-aware of your location.”  
  
Frustration flashed fast and furious through Jazz's field, but it was as pointless as everything else. It quickly fizzled out into a tired resignation. Indignation was getting him nowhere.  
  
“Prowl,” Jazz said and his shoulders slumped, entire frame shrinking down and plating clamped tight. “I fragged up.”  
  
“Yes, you did.”  
  
Trust Prowl to be blunt.  
  
Jazz sighed again and spoke from behind the shield of his hand. “And I'm guessing that I don't even get how badly I fragged up either.”  
  
Prowl shifted on the chair, losing some of rigidity in his posture. “Is that a question?”  
  
“You said I don't understand Bluestreak's function.”  
  
“I did.”  
  
Jazz dropped his hand, swinging his gaze toward the tactician. “Will you tell me?”  
  
Silence met his query. Prowl looked at him for a long time, several minutes, as though trying to read the sincerity in his request.  
  
“Some of it you already know,” Prowl finally said and Jazz nearly sighed in relief. That Prowl was going to tell him was a good sign. “You are aware he was an Enforcer like myself and Smokescreen. He was a trained sniper, but like most mechs, he had a secondary function.”  
  
“Interrogator,” Jazz guessed.  
  
Prowl inclined his helm. “Not quite.” He rubbed two fingers against his forehelm, just below his chevron. “Special Ops is not a business unique to war. Even in times of peace, there was a need for those willing to do the dirty deeds, to function undercover, to become something other than what they were.”  
  
Jazz frowned. “Bluestreak was a shifter?” It didn't make any sense to him. He hadn't seen any signs that his lover had once worked covert operations.  
  
“No.” Prowl tossed him an exasperated look. “But the very same focus that made him so deadly with a blaster made him an ideal candidate for Project Alpha-Four.”  
  
Jazz fell silent, contemplating. He knew very little about that specific project, unique as it was to Praxus and their elite Enforcers. Praxus was notorious for guarding its methods with near fanatic secrecy.  
  
He only knew that it related to their covert operations department, and it fell under the supervision of the behaviorist specialist. Which, Jazz recalled, was the same division that Smokescreen had transferred into in the early stages of the war.  
  
“You know better than most the pressures of special operations, of shifting,” Prowl continued, his gaze distant as though accessing an old database, which he probably was. “Often mechs returned and they were different. Changed more than we could have anticipated. We lost more than a few to suicide. Bluestreak and the others like him, they turned our agents back.”  
  
Jazz nibbled on his bottom lip. “He hacked them.”  
  
“Among other things, yes.” Prowl vented a slow burst. “He did what needed to be done. He hated it, but he also understood the necessity behind it.”  
  
Jazz lapsed into silence. It certainly explained a lot. He always knew that Bluestreak had some sort of interrogation training otherwise their sessions wouldn't have been possible. But that's what he thought it stemmed from: interrogation. Like a kinder, gentler, less insane Vortex.  
  
“There are a million and one secrets crowding Bluestreak's processor and memory banks. Confidences he's vowed to keep because mechs just want someone to listen. He talks, Jazz, because he can still hear them, the bits and pieces of their coding, their memories, viruses he can't erase.”  
  
Jazz's optics dimmed. “A hacker never emerges unscathed.” He knew this personally. “The fall of Praxus was a blessing and curse, wasn't it?”  
  
A noncommittal noise vibrated in the tactician's chassis. “Bluestreak will never be able to forget or abandon what he's been trained to do. It's in his coding now, spark deep. He needs to be needed.”  
  
Jazz's helm dipped. “He must think I was using him.”  
  
Prowl's datapad flicked off before it vanished into subspace. “Wouldn't you?”  
  
He had a name for the uneasy churning in his internals now: guilt. It clawed at him from the inside out, making his spark feel as though it had been infected with lead.  
  
“It's not like that at all,” Jazz argued. “I just...” Words escaped him and he huffed a ventilation, frustration eating into his field.  
  
Prowl rose to his pedes, his expression unreadable. “Bluestreak has requested a transfer to Ultra Magnus' unit. In accordance with Ratchet's recommendation, I cannot deny him.”  
  
His gaze snapped up, mouth dropping. “What? But--”  
  
“Unless Bluestreak retracts his request by the end of the week, he will cycle out.” It was Prowl's turn not to look at him, instead studying the very interesting wall. “I cannot force him to stay.”  
  
“That's slag!” Jazz snapped, and lurched forward, ignoring the pain that spiked through his mid-section. He slung an arm across the temp-plating, gritting his denta. “You're his commanding officer.”  
  
Prowl half-turned, regarding Jazz with a single optic. “Then let me rephrase: I will not force him to stay. Not for your sake. You are my friend, Jazz, the closest thing I have to a sibling, but I will not allow either of you to continue indulging in dangerous practices.”  
  
Jazz's mouth opened and closed, Prowl's words echoing Ratchet's now, as though the two of them were in cahoots. Which they probably were.  
  
“You have to decide what it is you want from him,” Prowl continued and headed to the exit, doorwings pressed flat against his backplate. “And if it is only a quick-fix, then let him go. You will be doing him a favor.”  
  
Jazz watched him go, bereft of argument, his earlier indignation somehow fizzling like one of Wheeljack's many unsuccessful experiments.  
  
He sat back against the berth, wincing as he plucked at the bandage. He stared at his arm, at the shiny temporary plating while the circuitry beneath completed self-repair. He couldn't see his backplate but was certain it was a mosaic of static-mesh, weld-lines, and bare armor.  
  
Prowl had been disappointed in him.  
  
But it was Bluestreak's distress that hurt the most.  
  
Ratchet returned, right on cue, another cube in one hand and a scanner in the other. This time, the snarky repartee was left out, the medic handing Jazz his ration and performing his scans in silence. He poked at the bandage on Jazz's midsection with a grunt of approval, looked over his arm with nary a sound, and stared for long moments at the mess on his backplate.  
  
The truth, Jazz realized, had to start somewhere. Maybe if he unraveled his own complicated motivations, he could find the words to fix what he'd ruined with Bluestreak.  
  
“It's hard,” Jazz said as Ratchet made another approving grunt over his recovery. He couldn't bear to look at the medic so he didn't try. “Sometimes, it feels like we're going to go on forever. Autobots and Decepticons trying to kill each other.”  
  
He paused, half-expecting Ratchet to say something, but the medic kept his silence. He focused intently on the readout from his scans, but Jazz knew he was paying attention.  
  
“I'm not the mech I used to be,” Jazz continued because fraggit, Prowl was right. Sometimes, a mech just wanted to be listened to. “That Jazz is dead. And the longer this war drags on, this Jazz is dying, too.”  
  
His palm hit the berth, fingers pushing and prodding at the covering. “Soon, we'll all be empty shells throwing hatred at each other, back and forth, like an automaton. Optimus has lofty dreams, and I'm with the Autobots because I believe in them and him, but sometimes, I think it's all an empty hope. At this rate, peace is a pipe dream.”  
  
He lapsed into silence, more than a few memories rising up in his processor, reminding him of the things he'd done, the things he'd seen, the paths this war had taken. It was not improving. They – Autobots and Decepticons – were at a stalemate, hurting and being hurt, killing and being killed, for what? What were they fighting for?  
  
“That is certainly a bleak take on the future.”  
  
Jazz's lips curled in a humorless smile. “Seein' it from my side, it's just hard to see the light.”  
  
“Hmm.”  
  
He offlined his optics, finding it better to stare at the darkness than pretend to examine what new additives were making his energon gritty and unpalatable. “For the longest time, I held it all in. I shoved it to the darkest corners, buried it in every hole I could find, made room in my helm for the darkness.”  
  
Jazz cycled a ventilation, feeling it catch, his spark shrinking in his chassis, quailing away from the painful truth. “But it's so much bigger, heavier, than one mech can contain. I ran out of space and the slag kept on coming. I was getting buried, Ratchet. I was up to my optics with nothing to save me.”  
  
A whisper of movement. The creak of the chair as Ratchet settled into it, the tentative reach of his field, offering understanding. “You asked for pain,” he said, softly.  
  
Jazz shook his helm. “No. That came after.” He onlined his optics, vision blurring before it sharpened. “I just... Blue's a good actor, isn't he? Everyone thinks he's this cheerful youngling with a permanent burst of sunshine for a spark. But I've seen it, seen him, he's just as lost in the darkness as me.”  
  
His spark felt heavier and heavier, sinking down toward his tanks, vision blurring at the edges, words coming out in a rush.  
  
“War fills you up, inside and out. Death sits on your shoulders, whispers in your audials, corrupts your spark. There's only so much a mech can take.”  
  
His vocals drop to a whisper, chill seeping into his plating. “Did you know that in the early stages of the war we lost more mechs to suicide than we did to battle?” Jazz asked, but it was a rhetorical question. “I used to wonder how someone could do that, snuff out their own spark.” He sucked in a vent, looking directly at Ratchet. “I don't wonder anymore.”  
  
Ratchet sighed, leaning forward, taking Jazz's hand in his. “Jazz, why are you telling me this?”  
  
“Because you asked.”  
  
The medic's free hand rubbed down his faceplate. “I don't begrudge you what it takes to keep you sane. Frag, we all do it. You are simply going after it in the wrong manner.”  
  
Jazz's orbital ridge drew down low. “I'm not--”  
  
“You are,” Ratchet insisted and his reached out, pointedly brushing his fingers over the visible weld-lines on Jazz's midsection. “You're asking for pain because it's simpler but it's not what you need, Jazz. It's not what's going to help.”  
  
Jazz didn't understand. And the confusion must have been tangible in his field because Ratchet got an irritated look on his face, muttering something subvocally about sparklings and playing with fire.  
  
“I called it unhealthy because you two are playing a dangerous game by two different sets of rules,” Ratchet explained. “And there need to be rules or it becomes something else entirely.”  
  
Rules? Game?  
  
Ratchet sighed, drawing back from Jazz and pinching his nasal ridge. “If you want to die, I can't stop you. I just don't have the resources to save mechs who don't want to be saved. But for Primus' sake, leave Bluestreak out of it.”  
  
“I don't want to die,” Jazz said.  
  
The medic rose to his pedes, giving Jazz a flat look. “Then remember that.” His scanner swept over Jazz once again, releasing a dull beep. “Looks like one more day of berth rest and then you can go on light duty, deskwork only. What you do with that, well, it's up to you.”  
  
A day, Jazz reflected once Ratchet had left. He had a day to figure out how to solve this.  
  
He couldn't help thinking, however, that it was already too late.  
  


o0o0o

  
  
Jazz would have liked to run from the medbay, shouting joy over his freedom like so many other Autobots were wont to do. But the fact remained he was still in pain. Ambulatory, but in pain.  
  
He limped slowly, exhausted to the core but determined to keep his pedes beneath him. The emotional rollercoaster had left him drained, and as much as he needed to collapse in his berth and recharge for a week, there were more pressing matters at spark.  
  
Bluestreak was leaving.  
  
Jazz had to try and stop him.  
  
Teletraan informed him that Bluestreak was not on shift. Indeed, the sniper had been taken completely off the roster in preparation for his transfer, a departure that had been moved up by several days in order to avoid Decepticon notice.  
  
Time ticked down.  
  
Jazz went to Bluestreak's quarters, shared with Beachcomber, and was relieved to find that the geologist wasn't present. The door was propped open by a couple of cargo containers, both of them filled to the brim.  
  
Jazz rapped his knuckles on the door to announce himself and stepped inside, spark contracting at the sight. Bluestreak's half of the room was completely bare of all the various paraphernalia he'd gathered over the course of their residence on Earth.  
  
“Wow,” Jazz said, finally finding Bluestreak nearest the berth, pulling down the last of the decorations from the wall above it. “You pack fast.”  
  
Bluestreak didn't look at him, but his doorwings flicked. “Had a lot of motivation.”  
  
Jazz winced, working his intake. This was not going to be easy.  
  
“Can we talk?”  
  
“Don't see a point.” Bluestreak hopped down from the berth, carefully rolling a poster from one of his favorite bands. “I'm not going to give you what you want.”  
  
“You don't know what that is.”  
  
Bluestreak paused, giving him a long look. “No, I don't. I guess I never did. Guess I should've known though.” His vocals were dripping ice. “Hurricane Jazz leaves a pretty easy trail to follow.”  
  
Pain throbbing through his hip, Jazz limped toward the desk, leaning against it. “It's not like that.”  
  
Bluestreak tossed the poster into a crate and folded his arms over his chassis, giving Jazz his full attention. “That what is it like?”  
  
“I made a mistake,” Jazz admitted, and he felt... uneven. Off-kilter. Like there used to be an even scale here but now it was tipping in an unfavorable direction.  
  
Moreso when Bluestreak didn't respond. When he let the silence build and build between them, prompting Jazz to forge onward, keep talking.  
  
“I wasn't fair to you or myself,” Jazz added, thinking of Ratchet and the rules and things he thought he wanted but weren't quite the things he needed. “And worst of all, I hurt you in the process.”  
  
Bluestreak frowned. “Is that an apology?”  
  
“You know it is.”  
  
Bluestreak's optics flattened. “Well, you're sorry and I'm sorry. So glad we've got that sorted.” He uncrossed his arms, whirling on a heel toward his desk where he jerked open the drawers and started pulling out their contents. “Now if you'll excuse me, I need to finish packing. They're going to need this space for a transfer.”  
  
He passed Jazz, dumping an armload into one of the crates, then turned around and went back for more. But Jazz snagged his arm, their fields coming into sharp contact, and Jazz's spark spasmed at the unexpected dissonance.  
  
Bluestreak wouldn't look at him, and that hurt more than the dismissal. More than the jarring sensation of fields that once gently twined at the edges with comfort and familiarity and an affection neither of them dared name.  
  
“Is there nothing I can say to convince you to stay?” Jazz asked, no, pleaded. He was on the raggedy edge and pride had been abandoned a long time ago. He'd left it somewhere in the medbay with his battered armor-panels in the pile of scrap meant for refurbishment.  
  
Bluestreak cycled a ventilation.  
  
Jazz reached out with his field, offering apology, desperation, all of the warmth he had ever felt for his partner, but Bluestreak shook his helm, gently easing out of Jazz's grasp.  
  
“We can't just go back to the way things were, it won't work anymore.”  
  
A tiny spark of hope dared flare to life. “Then let's start over. A clean slate.”  
  
“It's not that easy.”  
  
“But we could try,” Jazz insisted. “Figure things out together. Actually talk to each other.”  
  
Bluestreak's shoulder slumped, doorwings echoing them. “Jazz, I can't.”  
  
He moved quickly, circling around until he could face Bluestreak, look into the sniper's optics. “Teach me the rules. Tell me what you need. I told Ratchet there's nothing good left in this war but prove me wrong. Just don't leave.”  
  
He sounded desperate even to his own audials. He sounded like he was two steps away from dropping to his knees and groveling, and maybe he was.  
  
And maybe, that's just a little bit of what Ratchet and Prowl were talking about.  
  
Bluestreak's optics radiated sadness. “I don't trust you anymore, Jazz,” he said, stepping around him. “Or maybe, that's unfair. I don't trust myself with you, perhaps that would be more accurate.”  
  
Jazz startled, not expecting that sort of answer. “But...”  
  
Bluestreak started digging in the drawer again, pulling out one last armload of various trinkets and entertainment items before bumping it closed with his knee. “It's probably better this way,” he added, dumping that gathering into another crate before sealing the lid. “Neither of us have to pretend anymore.”  
  
He stood in the center of the room, turning in a slow circle, as though double-checking that nothing important had been forgotten. The walls were bare, the floor as well. Three crates were stacked in a neat pile by the door, ready for transport.  
  
Bluestreak wouldn't be leaving anything behind.  
  
Except, Jazz realized, me. He was actually standing next to the empty desk and berth, like a piece of furniture that had to stay because it was bolted down and didn't actually belong to the mech in question.  
  
He could talk and talk and apologize and beg, but Bluestreak had already made his decision. There was nothing Jazz could do.  
  
It was over.  
  
Bluestreak cycled a long ventilation, the sound filling the heavy silence. “Thanks for the memories, Jazz.”  
  
He left; Jazz watched him go. There was nothing he could say.  
  


o0o0o

  
  
It was Prowl who found him, hours later, stumbling down a forgotten hallway, too overcharged to remember where he was or where he was going. That didn't stop him from sucking down the high grade cube after cube.  
  
It wasn't going to help him repair, but right now, that wasn't what Jazz wanted anyway.  
  
Prowl's disapproving stare wasn't going to make him cease either. Though it was kind of nice the way his optics were flat, but his field was a soft tremor of exasperated sympathy.  
  
Jazz rolled his shoulders, sloshing the high grade back and forth. “He's leavin',” he said, all the explanation he figured Prowl needed.  
  
“Yes, I know.”  
  
He gulped down another swallow, felt it hit his tanks and roll around what was probably already at capacity. “S'my fault.”  
  
“Only by half.”  
  
Jazz snorted and tipped up the cube again, but Prowl swept in, snatched it out of his hands. Jazz made an aborted grab, tilted onto his side, and decided the floor was a nice place to lay down. The shift in angle seemed to calm his tanks a little.  
  
“Should've let me offline,” Jazz replied, and his vision started to swim. There were warnings cropping up in his systems, about overcharge and overfull tanks and energy spikes.  
  
He ignored them.  
  
Prowl huffed a ventilation. “I have worked too hard to keep you alive, Jazz,” he said with a familiar chastising tone. “I am not about to cease now. Get up.”  
  
One arm flopped out, useless. “Don't think I can.”  
  
Or better yet, he didn't think he should. That might just be the one thing that tipped the scales in favor of immediate expulsion of extraneous energon.  
  
“You will.” Prowl's voice was firm, better used on miscreants like Sideswipe. “This is conduct unbecoming an officer.”  
  
Jazz tried to push himself upright, managing a wobbly uprightness on his hands and knees. “Just once,” he asked with a pleading look, “can that not matter?”  
  
Prowl's look softened and he crouched. “I see you are finally beginning to understand.”  
  
He hung his helm. “Too little, too late.”  
  
Prowl sighed again and reached out, curling a hand around Jazz's arm and tugging him up to his knees. “As usual, your talent for exaggeration is worsened by overcharge.”  
  
Stumbling, Jazz clung to the tactician like Prowl had become a lifeline. His processor throbbed, his vision swam, and his tank was making a rather ominous clunk-grumble.  
  
“Buh?”  
  
Prowl's grip tightened as he slowly turned them down the hallway, beginning a slow, laborious trek that would likely end at a berth. Preferably, Jazz's own.  
  
“Patience is a virtue you will never enjoy, I'm afraid.”  
  
Jazz frowned, trying to decipher what Prowl meant, but couldn't seem to make the right connections in his processor.  
  
“Time, Jazz,” the tactician clarified, pulling him down one hall and the next, it was all starting to blur together. “And distance. Right now, Bluestreak needs both. He may yet return.”  
  
Jazz sagged, but couldn't be sure if it was because of his emotional slope or the fact that the motor relays in his legs had stopped responding.  
  
“Never took you for the optimistic type, Prowl.”  
  
Prowl's field rippled around him, thick with resignation but offering comfort as well. “Perhaps I just choose to believe in my fellow Autobots.”  
  
There was something else in his words, something more than just Jazz's failed relationship with Bluestreak. But his high grade soaked thoughts couldn't connect the dots.  
  
Still, maybe Prowl was right. Maybe there was still a chance. Maybe he just had to be patient and start by learning to stand on his own two pedes.  
  
“Prowl,” Jazz said, squeezing his best friend's arm. “Thanks.”  
  
A thoughtful noise vibrated through Prowl's chassis. “If I cannot help my own family, then what hope is there for the Autobots at large?” he poses. “Keep that in spark the next time you feel there is nothing left. We are not defeated yet.”  
  
“No, we aren't,” Jazz murmured, and lapsed into silence.  
  
His best friend's energy field wrapped around him, offering a subtle comfort, which Jazz accepted gladly.  
  
Be patient. Jazz could do that. He would get his act together, pick up the pieces of his fractured self, and wait. He owed Bluestreak that much. And so much more.  
  
He would, Jazz decided, start with an apology and hope for the best.  
  
Hope. Hm.  
  
Yeah, he could settle for a little bit of that.  
  


****


End file.
